Not so much “released,” as “exchanged.” For five stellar individuals that had been held in Guantanamo: Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Abdul Haq Wasiq.

There is an interesting statement in the article:

Hagel said security measures are in place to ensure the national security of the United States would not be compromised by the prisoners’ release.

Now, if this was a better world, we could assure that these guys would present no threat to the security of the US because we secretly replaced their Folgers Crystals with polonium 210 on the flight to Qatar, or they swallowed capsules containing small explosive devices, or we’ve Manchurian Candidate reprogrammed them, or we showed them secret footage of disguised Navy SEALS driving nuclear weapons around Certain Holy Cities. But I suspect, given the current feckless administration, that we just asked them really nicely to promise to not do anything naughty in the future.

Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee…

“In executing this transfer, the president also clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress 30 days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated,” they continued. “Our joy at Sergeant Berghdal’s release is tempered by the fact that President Obama chose to ignore the law, not to mention sound policy, to achieve it.”

Short form: a guy in Long Grove, Iowa, was arrested with 71 marijuana plants. Why did this nefarious villain have this much Evil Weed? Because he has cancer, and the oil he extracts from the plants is apparently all that’s keeping the cancer from eating him alive.

OK, if it’s not bad enough that the police are arresting people for simply having a *plant,* and if it’s not bad enough that they are arresting cancer patients who needs said plant in order to have any sort of quality of life, there’s this to consider:

a Scott County District judge has ruled he won’t allow Mackenzie to use his ailment as a defense.

“I’m not allowed to mention anything,” Mackenzie said Thursday, the day Judge Henry Latham’s ruling was filed. “I’m not allowed to give proof why I was using. Now, there is no fair trial.”

The patient/defendant makes a damned fine point here:

“If I’m to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the court doesn’t let me tell the truth, they’re making me a liar”

The defendant here looks to be dying. If he’s convicted, he’ll get three years, and he doesn’t expect to survive it. So… why not jump up (as much as he can jump) during testimony, show the jury the bleeding tumors, and explain as quickly as possible just what’s going on? What’s the worst that can be done to him? A contempt citation? Please. If he does that the judge will likely instruct the jury to ignore it. Someone should then blurt out to the jury the concept of “jury nullification.”

(Yes, yes, I ran this artwork a year ago. But I’m running it again, this time with more verbage & photos.)

A cutaway illustration of the KIWI-A nuclear rocket test unit. As shown here it is actually upside down compared to how it was tested; as with I believe all the other nuclear rockets that were tested, the nozzle fired upwards towards the sky. This rocket engine was not meant to represent a flight-capable system, rather just a basic proof of concept. And thus it was named after a flightless bird. Note that the hydrogen “propellant” is injected at the nozzle end of the reactor, travels forward through the graphite reflectors, then makes a U-turn and goes through the reactor “plates” that wrapped around a deuterium oxide central moderator. This is not at all like what later, more developed nuclear rockets like NERVA used.

Note that test firings on the KIWI system began in *1959.* That’s 55 years ago when we had the functional start of nuclear rocketry. Today we have… Powerpoint.

KIWI firing. Note orange hydrogen combustion plume. This is not due to combustion within the engine, but due to superheated gaseous hydrogen mixing with the oxygen in the air and burning externally. Full rez HERE.

Probably the most entertaining test must have been the KIWI-TNT (Transient Nuclear Test)test. Here, a KIWI engine was put on a rail car and allowed to go prompt critical, with the result being that the engine blew up with the approximate force of about 100 pounds of TNT. The nuclear fuel was uranium oxide, so it was already oxidized and very likely underwent little to no chemical change; but the graphite reflector was pure carbon. Pure *shattered* carbon. Pure shattered carbon at extremely high temperature. And thus it promptly caught fire int he air and burned, with the result you can see below:

The “sparks” should be chunks of reflector. The fireball would be hydrogen… *if* hydrogen was being pumped through it at the time. I’m not sure that it was, though.

Detroit is coming back! Google Street View lets you check out the same places over a span of years, and the progress has been remarkable. You can check out a number of these fantastic images of progress HERE.

Now who could argue that the policies of Detroits fine leadership over the past few decades has been anything other than inspired?

It seems the Cold War Gallery at the US Navy Museum has a full-scale reproduction of a Trident warhead on display. It seems a long way to go from rural Utah to get photos of that one thing, but photos of that one thing – especially photos with a good scale reference in frame, and photos taken from “below” to see the aft end of it – would seem to be potentially very useful.

I don’t know the layout of the place, but what I’d *love* is a photo taken with a long lens as far away as possible while still keeping the warhead large in frame, to get as orthogonal a view as possible. But what would be vital would be photos that give dimension to the thing. Measurements of the *glass* would be handy.

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]